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Late Thoughts on an Old War: The Legacy of Vietnam

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How quickly we forget. The "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" and Ted Sampley run John Kerry through the mill for his "betrayal" of the troops who served in Vietnam in his testimony in the Senate in 1971. Dr. Beidler reminds us that it wasn't the soldiers that were to blame for the atrocity that was the Vietnam War but the blind stupidity of the political and military leadership that led to, and kept us in, a war that we were never going to win. Read this and "They Marched Into Sunlight" to get a refresher on why things were they way they were in the late 60's and early 70's. I particularly appreciate Dr. Beildler's perspective on the totally superficial "sacrifices" of the American public in the current war. In speaking of the soldiers of this war he says, "Don't come home expecting anybody to remotely care". We are too busy on our cell phones.

Mr. Beidler uses his personal experiences along with his academic abilities to offer the reader a unique view of the Vietnam War. He suggests that we have created a myth about Vietnam and that we haven't learned any lessons about the limits of our abilities as a culture or government. We haven't faced up to the consequences of our actions in Vietnam.

What I really liked about this book is that Mr. Beidler didn't forget the participants. One chapter in particular, "How I flunked race in Vietnam", gave me a valuable insight into human behavior.

Philip Beidler deserves his reputation as a student, teacher and craftsman of his language. Philip Beidler was once a young combat commander in Vietnam. His gritty reflections, from the ground, of our generation's experience there, are, to me, the truest voice and clearest vision of that time and place. If you were there, Beidler rings true. If you love history, he rings true. If you love well written advocates of social justice, Beidler rings true. I was there and, like the author, continue to chew on what I witnessed and what it still means. I graduated from Cal in History in 1964. I just retired from teaching history, with a focus on social justice, to high school juniors and seniors. If I updated my bibliography for ANY reader interested in understanding this country's war through the experiences of its young participants AND the lessons of exporting war that this nation still hasn't learned, Beidler would be very near the top. Don't mean to oversell "Late Thoughts on an Old War" but Beidler hooked me with his chapter-long critique of the movie, "Platoon", compared with its genre.

The Vietnam War ended 36 years ago. Can a thoughtful book on such an old war engage us across the time distance? Though I was living in the US then, as a foreigner I was not directly touched by it. Do such thoughts on an "old war" engage me? Yes it the answer - they do, both as a person interested in history and social sciences, and as a citizen of this planet. Yes, most of this book is very much worth reading and reflecting upon - well with the exception of a couple of chapters on matters like "The Music of the Nam", which deals with radio programs of the times (it's my fault - I'm an ignoramus in this department).

The chapter: "The language of the Nam" is arguably the best way to describe the absurdity of war - but also its unfathomable and hermetic complexity - without having a personal narrative "delegitimize" the story by narrowing the take to personal experience. Anyone interested in how a "large organization" actually works, can get an eye- and earful here. (My favorite: In the chapter on My Lai one gets an intimation of the army in action. Command helicopters hover overhead, stacked in accordance to rank, controlling everything, and seeing nothing.)

Solatium - the handful of dollars handed over as compensation for collateral deaths - lays bare the hypocrisy of fighting a "good war", where a foreign power is supposed to fight in-country for the "goodies", against the "baddies", and able to discriminate between these categories in a cowering population. "...how totally, appallingly, even insanely resolute we remained in believing in our good intentions" (pg. 47) should be put at the entrance of any war memorial, be it national, or multi-lateral.

"How I flunked race in Vietnam" is no so much a "just so" story about how the USARV morally imploded, but a "must read" metaphor of what happens when any large structure, be it an army, or a society, goes bad. Old fault-lines open up into festering wounds, and amidst this general mayhem, some resolutely selfish people just walk over live or dead bodies to the top. Such processes go fast, and it takes great moral fiber - and infinite strength - to stop this self-destruction. When a structure crumbles, no grip holds for long as fissures open up everywhere.

"Sorry, Mr. McNamara" is a scathing indictment of an ageless kind of policy: "...there was such determination to do something, anything..." (pg. 141). The West has no capacity to endure, and in its headless search of Truth Now will destroy everything so as not to have to answer the question: "What would YOU do? Doing nothing for the West is not an option.

Did McNamara truly say "...we were wrong!"... The author points to a troublesome "yet" at the beginning of the crucial phrase that seems to change the whole perspective. Again, this is a cogent cautionary tale for anyone relying on mainstream news media for accurate reporting.

I do not fully share the author's distrust of quantification as a policy tool. Too much faith is placed in "common sense", "self-evident policies" - until one scrapes the rhetoric and finds contrary evidence in the numbers. But one must interrogate them mercilessly. This is what John Vann did, when setting "body counts" against "captured weapons" to infer that civilians in the Delta were being killed to pad the figures and advance the Butcher's career (Anyone working with numbers should read this chapter to see how numbers can destroy, when manipulation is allowed). Interrogation implies curiosity for the truth, and such curiosity may be satisfied in many (devious) ways - including talking to drivers and grunts. But here, hierarchical structures, with their vertical "chain of reporting" are particularly bad.

I'd praise the author most for his willingness to raise "Calley's Ghost": "The thought that haunts us forever, of course, that we could once have been them, the participants in a horror ..." (pg. 173). I'll join him on this point, from my desk chair, to acknowledge that given right circumstances, lack of leadership, and survival instinct, any one, and me first, could have been there.

4 million Vietnamese died as the result of the war; 3.5 million Americans were in-country; 350'000 had extended combat experience; and 58'000 American soldiers died - very young. Many returned from this war - part to their ravaged country, part to a country set on quickly forgetting the sacrifices it had demanded of them, because it could not acknowledge the pain at the same time as the political defeat. This lingering pain was smothered in silence. The author has spoken up on the real issues, rather than the spurious glory of combat. He remembered all, friend and foe, united in endless suffering. He deserves commendation. And we owe all of these people that we reflect on the inevitability of human folly - and ignorance.